The last few weeks every time I check my email there’s an announcement about affiliate programs moving and closing. I grumble about it because it can be a lot of work to change the links. This post isn’t to complain about merchants moving networks because I know sometimes it is for really good reasons. Rather, it’s to give some affiliate perspective on how the affiliate managers can make things easier on the affiliates.

1) Don’t say that the program is “closing.” We start to panic because we aren’t sure if it means that the program is closing totally or if it is really just moving. I know some networks have rules about what merchants can say when the emails come through their system. The easiest thing to say if you can’t say anything about another network is “The Merchant X program is closing on the Y affiliate network.” This at least gives us a clue that there is already a program open on another network or will be soon.

2) Give us at least a 2 week notice. A month is even better if possible. We may need to swap out entire datafeeds, update old blog posts, stop PPC campaigns, or make changes to our databases. When we get multiple emails like this in the same week, it becomes impossible to get all of these changes made in one week.

3) Tell us where you are moving. Get the word out any way that you can without violating network policies. If you can email your top affiliates directly, do that. But also don’t leave out everyone else. Simply posting on your social media at least gives us a chance of finding it if we do a quick search, especially if you are an OPM. When we find out where a program is moving we can start making plans for either changing out the links or dropping the merchant completely if it is a network we don’t work with.

4) Have the new program ready with the basics. I’ve gone in and applied for a lot of newly moved programs only to discover that they didn’t have all of the standardbanner sizes loaded into the system or the datafeed ready. Have the basic necessities ready in the new program before affiliates even start applying so that we can move everything over as soon as we get accepted.

5) Approve existing affiliates quickly. Speaking of the application process, make it as quick as possible for affiliates to be able to pull the new links. If a program is closing on one network on Friday, don’t wait until Friday morning to approve existing affiliates. When possible, extend offers to us so we can start pulling links as soon as we accept the terms in the new network.

6) Keep terms the same. It’s incredibly disappointing to see a merchant move to another network and then drop the commission in half. Unless the program itself is in danger, don’t use the move as an opportunity to lowball affiliates.

7) Offer incentives to move. This isn’t a “must” but it is nice when merchants offer something for affiliates to get links moved more quickly. It could be a higher introductory rate on the new network for a few weeks or an exclusive coupon there or anything like that. If an affiliate is dragging their feet on making the switch or unsure whether they even want to spend the time making the changes, an incentive can help.

8) Keep the lines of communication open. More than anything else, let the affiliates know that you are available for questions and respond to emails in a timely fashion. They may not be as familiar with the new network or may have problems applying for the new program. Be patient with us and understand that while you may only be migrating one merchant this month (or even 5), we might be having to switch over 10 or 20.

Do you have any other tips for affiliate managers who are moving their programs? Any pet peeves?

At least once a week I get an email from someone asking me if I know what network a merchant or offer is on. Sometimes it is because I am running the offer or working with the merchant. More often it is because I am seen as the keeper of all secret affiliate marketing information.

I always answer the question but my real secret is that I use various cheats to get the answer. I used to go into every network and search by keyword but I got smarter because sometimes finding the information is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Today I’m going to share my cheats with you!

Three Ways To Find an Offer or Affiliate Link

1. Check the merchant footer: This is the easiest route and the one I try first when someone sends me a merchant link. I just click the link and look for something about the affiliate program in the footer. More than half the time I find it.

These tend to be your most affiliate-friendly merchants and those pages often tell you not only where the program is but who manages it and other information about the program.

So what about the other half the time when the merchant doesn’t give the information away directly on their site? [Read more…]

As the owner of a rewards site, I do not have a choice but to work with many different affiliate networks. That said, if I had the choice I probably wouldn’t work with a few of them. Affiliate managers and merchants often ask me which networks I like and which I do not like. Rather than complain about what I don’t like, I decided to put together my “dream network,” or what it would look like to take the best components of each and put them all together.

(As a bit of background, I’m not a “Super Affiliate” by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some good niches and databases. I don’t market to a million people or do paid search at all. I’m pretty much your average content affiliate.)

Personal Communication: Hands down, ShareASale and buy.at do the best job of communicating on a one-on-one basis with affiliates. They make it easiest to talk to them via email, forum, Twitter, Facebook, and just about any other way that I could possibly want to talk to them. I know that I can get in touch with at least one person with either of these networks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Troubleshooting and Problem Solving: In a way this goes along with communication, but ShareASale definitely stands out for this. I’ve sent messages via ABW forum or Twitter and gotten responses from the management team there within an hour. Actual responses to my questions and not just passing the buck. Some networks make you wait 1-2 business days for responses. That isn’t acceptable when our industry never stops. Even worse, some of the networks hide behind “help desk” email addresses and names and you can’t just communicate with someone until you get an issue resolved. It’s infuriating and it can result in lost revenue for all of us (Linkshare, I’m talking to you specifically on this one). Trouble ticket/help desk systems can work well when there is accountability behind them but they aren’t helpful when you have emergency situations or not actual point of contact.

Finding and Applying to Merchants: While no one network stands out for this, some are definitely better than others. Commission Junction makes it easy to search for and apply to a whole list of merchants at once. I also seem to get good results on my search terms, even if I do not know the exact merchant name that I am looking for.

Coupons and Discounts: This is huge for us at Sunshine Rewards and we need to automate as much as possible. It doesn’t do us any good when we get hot coupons but can only download them once a day. We end up loading the coupons manually from the emails before we can download as much as 24 hours later. Because of this, I favor the networks that allow coupons to be downloaded as they are added such as Linkshare and ShareASale. The one way that Google excels in that they allow you to decide which types of coupons and discounts you want to download.

Reporting: Obviously most affiliates are going to favor real-time reporting over batch reporting. I like when I can manipulate the data in different ways easily. ShareASale and buy.at are the best for transactions coming up quickly. Commission Junction is great for allowing easy downloads that can be manipulated in different ways. Linkshare has the easiest way to find individual product sales, which can be important for some of my niche sites.

Credit Disputing: Often we have to report when we do not get credit for a purchase. Some networks do not have a mechanism for this at all. Both Linkshare and Commission Junction make it easy to file disputes for credits, and Linkshare even lets you “escalate” a denial for further review. This helps keep track of outstanding issues and ensure that they are actually getting to the merchants.

Newsletters: I would much rather get links in a newsletter than have to click on the “Get Link” in an email to generate the links. I don’t know how much this depends on the affiliate manager, but it seems like the Google, ShareASale, and Linkshare links are most likely to come right in the newsletter. I also like the ability that some networks have to send the newsletters to multiple people in my company because I am not the one who pulls the coupon links from the newsletters.

Video: I haven’t been using too many videos through the networks lately, but ShareASale makes it easiest for me to add their links to my own videos and many of their merchants have video links now. buy.at has a new video tool but I honestly haven’t used it because I haven’t come across any good videos for merchants that I am running with them. Video on the networks doesn’t matter too much to me because I find people click on the links around the embedded video anyway.

Advanced Tools: I love the Linkshare LinkGenerator and CouponSnap. As a blogger, there is nothing simpler than navigating to a page and then clicking on the little box on my browser to generate my link. If every network had these, I would do a lot more product reviews. ShareASale offers a pretty easy way to generate a link to a specific page as well, although you do need to go into the interface and do it. I like that deep linking functionality to pages where I want to refer my visitors to a full category of products. All of the networks are hit or miss to me on how easy it is to pull links for individual products. It seems that a lot of that comes down to the merchants as well.

I could go on for hours about other features and each of the networks specifically, but you would get pretty bored. These hit the high points for me. What would your dream network look like?

Before I got into affiliate marketing, I have to admit that I really like toolbars. I liked being reminded where to shop and get deals. But after I became an affiliate and started getting educated, I realized that those toolbars were a convenience for me at the expense of people who worked really hard on their websites.

Naturally when I started a cash back site, I didn’t even contemplate a toolbar. I knew from a few different sources that the rewards sites with toolbars were looked at as “evil” and parasitic. It became the “good guys” versus the “bad guys.” But has that all changed?

Shareasale (one of my favorite networks) is having a series of discussions regarding changing its terms of service regarding toolbars. A number of merchants and affiliates (who I consider to be clean and ethical) have stepped up to say that they think the time is right to evaluate new technologies. Others are EXTREMELY opposed to the mere suggestion.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and I hope to have a seat in the front row because it will impact my business heavily. If you would like to read more information straight from the source, check out the ShareASale Blog.